Gephyrophillia | Watch This Space #137

Originally Posted on 01/24/2006 by Jeff Harris

In a move that should have shocked nobody, The Walt Disney Company announced Tuesday that they're buying Pixar Animation Studios in an all-stock deal worth $7.4 billion, making Disney the owner of a company that has made them a lot of money and Steve Jobs Disney's largest and most influential shareholder. In case you didn't know, he also owns this little startup computer company called Apple, which makes the iPod, a device that made digital music (and now digital video) a little more legitimate.

Why am I not surprised by this multibillion-dollar acquisition (you know, the word "merger" is bandied about to the point of nothingness; The UPN/WB partnership, that's a merger; Turner/TimeWarner, that was a merger, this is an acquisition)? Well, murmurs about this merger has been spreading around the entertainment news world since the announcement that Michael Eisner was stepping down from Disney back in 2004.

Afterall, Eisner was seen as the bully that didn't want to keep Pixar's partnership around. Pixar could have easily been distributed their own products without Disney. Afterall, Disney needed Pixar more than Pixar needed Disney. Disney's 3D products without Pixar weren't exactly critically-acclaimed nor truly memorable, but they had decent box office numbers. Well, Valiant didn't, but the others did.

This acquisition was clearly about one thing and one thing alone: Disney getting respect in the animation industry again.

Let's face it.

Nobody's going to have fond memories for Home on the Range or Return to Neverland the way they have reverence for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, or The Lion King. Toy Story came out a little over 10 years ago, and people still quote it. Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles were fun films that were a diversion from the norm. Pixar has basically embodied the Disney magic that das Maus Haus seemed to have lost themselves. Everything Pixar has done has been a fun movie (I'm hoping that Cars isn't as bad as I think it will be), and when you've seen Disney experimenting, they either fell on their face or just didn't get enough people at the box office (Atlantis: The Lost Kingdom was not a bad movie; in fact, it's one of my favorite Disney movies of all time, and yet, because it wasn't filled with anthromorphic characters singing and dancing, people didn't connect to it). All of Disney's Best Animated Pictures were productions of other studios (Pixar's Finding Nemo and The Incredibles and Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away, which was produced domestically by Pixar's John Lassiter), and Disney has suffered in theaters, if you don't count the Pixar films. If you do, well, Disney's doing alright.

And now, the clamor for Pixar's distribution rights, which involved everybody from MGM to Warner Bros. (which continues to have NO LOVE for anything produced in-house), is now over as Disney is now the owner of the studio that has been one of the creative voices in animation in the last decade.

But wait a sec . . . people are forgetting about the 2,000 pound gorilla by the name of Steve Jobs. Okay, he's not literally a 2,000 lb. gorilla, but his presence on the Disney board of directors and his status as the largest stockholder in Disney makes him stand out a little more in the eyes of insiders, animation historians, and investors everywhere. Afterall, he's the co-founder and CEO of Apple Computers. After he came back, the company's fortunes (both figurative and actual) increased dramatically. He introduced the iMac, which returned Apple to the public eye, and the iPod, which is a revolution in itself. His iTunes Music Store found a successful way to legitimize the once-"outlaw" digital music scene. Quicktime made online digital video fun. And now with Video iPod, he's bringing legit online video to the masses. It's not surprising that when Video iPod was announced, one of the first companies to come onboard was The Walt Disney Company. Mr. Jobs finds himself in an interesting situation.

Jobs has made a 21st century business template that many entertainment companies should look at, and now that he's in a power position within the walls of the Magic Kingdom, perhaps he could, in the end, become the new monarach of Disney one day.

If not, at least the animation division will be totally revamp. I hope that under the guidance of guys like John Lassiter, Disney returns to its roots.

He could become the man to embody the spirit of Walt Disney more than anybody since his death, even more than Katzenberg and Eisner combined. Heck, I'd like to see guys like Brad Bird develop some 2D features at Disney when it's all said in done.

Perhaps then will I believe this acquisition is a merger.

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Jeff Harris,
The X Bridge Creator/Webmaster
January 24, 2006